(Curt Teich Postcard Archives/ Getty)

3. Vermont—$8.60 (Highest)

Vermont increased its minimum wage in 2013, raising it from $8.44 to $8.60. For tipped employees, the minimum wage is $4.17 per hour. To qualify as a tipped employee in Vermont, you must make over $120 per month in tips—roughly four to six times what every other state requires.

Like Oregon, Vermont also ties its minimum wage to the consumer price index.

(Curt Teich Postcard Archives/ Getty)

No Minimum Wage!

Yes, there are five states in our Union with no minimum-wage laws on the books. It might not be surprising, but all the states without a minimum wage are from the South. Here’s to you, Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina and Tennessee.

(Curt Teich Postcard Archives/ Getty)

The 7 Worst States in the Fight Against Human Trafficking—2013 Edition

Human trafficking tends to make Americans think of far-flung, developing countries. Unfortunately, children, women, and men are taken and forced into work against their will, all the time, right here.

The number of people trafficked in the United States is difficult to estimate, but the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children says that there are approximately 100,000 children in the U.S. forced into sex trafficking every year. And many more thousands of adults are enslaved, as well.

A leading organization in the fight against modern slavery, Polaris Project has just released its 2013 ratings of the 50 U.S. states in terms of their preventative and punitive legislation against human trafficking.

Their scorecard is meant to be a catalyst for change, and it is. Polaris has helped pass 40 new laws in more than half the states in the U.S. Three of the worst states from last year—Arkansas, Montana, and Wyoming—greatly improved their scores this year. Senior policy counsel for Polaris, James Dold, says, “As a matter of fact, Arkansas was the most improved, followed by Wyoming. And those are states where Polaris Project worked quite closely with the Attorney General’s office, with legislators, and so we saw a tremendous amount of improvement to the legal infrastructure in those states, which is really cool.”

So, which states are at the back of the pack this year? Click through to see if your state is one that needs to make some big changes.

Image: gavni/Getty

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Last week fast-food workers went on strike in over 50 cities nationwide, asking for a living wage of $15 per hour.

In his State of the Union Address, President Obama called for a raise in the federal minimum wage from the current rate of $7.25 an hour to $9 an hour. The last time the wage was given a boost was in 2009, after 2007’s Fair Minimum Wage Act called for a gradual increase from $5.15 to $7.25 an hour.

Currently, the minimum wage by state varies. While some states have an hourly rate that is higher than the federal minimum, the majority of states set theirs at or below $7.25.

There are states that also allow a lower minimum wage for tipped employees (waitresses, valets, bartenders). This tipped wage can be as low as $2 or $3; however, if employees’ tips do not take hourly wages over the minimum, employers are required to make up the difference.

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